Creating An Email Marketing Plan

You may think that using email marketing in your business is only for highly skilled writers or tech gurus out there who have a lot of extra time.

You’d be wrong! Even the busiest of business owners and terrible writers can use email marketing to grow their business. So…there’s hope for you.

When I started using email marketing to grow my gym, I was a terrible writer and horrible at grammar and spelling. I think I’ve gotten better at writing, but the grammar and spelling are still an issue. Don’t let little things like that hold you back!

Your writing skills will get better over time and as your business has more success, you can hire people to edit your writing.

You Need Two Things to Get Started…

The two things you need to get started are a small number of people who agree to join your email list and an email service provider (ESP).

Having people to send to is important for your confidence at first. It also ensures that you stick to your commitment to use email marketing because these people will be expecting to get emails from you!

You can send out an email to your clients, friends, family and social media followers telling them that you’ll be starting an email newsletter and asking them to join. They can either request that you add them or you can send them an opt-in link.

It’s also critical that you use an email service provider like MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact or something similar.

MailChimp seems to be the leader for most people both in affordability to get started and allowing you to have the features you’ll want later as your list grows. It has a freemium level that you can use to get started, so cost isn’t a problem.

Using an email service provider will help ensure your emails are getting to your list, help you stay compliant with CAN-SPAM laws, and give you the ability to track your stats such as open rates and clicks.

Now What Do I Do?

Now that you’ve asked your clients and friends to join your list and you’ve signed up for an email service, what in the world is next…

At this point you need to commit to a schedule of sending out content. Consistency is more important than frequency when you’re getting started.

If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands you can start with once per week to send your emails. I suggest not sending on a Monday because you’ll forget to write it over the weekend and then you’ll have a tough time getting it done on Monday as you catch up on work.

Tuesday and Friday works well and send at the same time each day. It doesn’t have to be in the morning or at midnight like you’ll see from some email marketers. Pick a time where your subscribers will be able to read it.

At FR, we send ours out at 8am.

Why? Most trainers will clean out their inbox first thing in the morning so if we send it out at 6am or earlier, we could get lost in that clean up. They are also training people early in the morning so they may not give us the time to read it.

So we send later in the morning to avoid the morning clean up and hopefully get a prime spot in their inbox when they are done with morning training sessions.

Create Your Content

Having both a course of action and schedule are vital when you create an email marketing plan. Depending on the frequency that you’ll be sending your list emails, you should create a schedule for sending content.

The types of content you could send are:

• Educational Content like blogs or videos
• Motivational Content
• Case Studies/Testimonials

Pretty much everything that you send will fall into those 3 categories.

The medium that you use to create your content will depend on your strengths. If you like writing or that’s easiest for you to do, write blogs or just send content in your emails. I personally like blog posts because you can reuse them later if needed and they provide content on your website.

Videos are a great way to communicate to your audience and you can post them on your website, YouTube, social media, etc. Podcasts are even an option but they are tougher and more expensive to create than your other options.

Mix it up, try out a few options and see what works best for you. Aim to send at least one piece of content and one case study/testimonial to your audience each week.

So, if you’re only sending emails once per week you’d have both of them in that email. There is no set rule on what to send. Just provide value and content to help your subscribers out and you’ll be just fine.

Wait, Isn’t This About Marketing?

Yep, and so far all we’ve talked about is content. However, that’s what you’ll be using to engage your subscribers and get them to know, like and trust you.

Once a month (more if you send more frequently) you can email out an offer for a promotion, front-end offer, or some other type of marketing/sales email. A good rule to follow is the 3-to-1 rule.

You need to send out 3 pieces of content for every 1 offer you send out.

It doesn’t always have to be 3 content emails in a row and then 1 sales email but over time you should hit these numbers.

Getting started with email marketing and creating an email marketing plan to grow your business isn’t tough. You simply need to pick a schedule you can stick to and then start producing content.

It will seem tough at first. You’ll probably have trouble thinking of topics and you may even send out some bad emails. Actually, I know you’ll send out some bad emails. We all do it!

That’s okay. Stay consistent, keep putting out content and sending your emails on time and it will get easier. And you’ll have a powerful marketing tool that you can use to grow your business.

Want An Email Marketing System?

Luckily, you can take the easy route to creating your email marketing system by taking our course that will walk you through every aspect of email marketing!

You’ll discover how to:

• Build your email list without spending tons of money or time on it.
• Create email campaigns that turn leads into clients.
• Steal some of our most successful email templates to use in your business.
• Write better copy for your website and emails.

This complete system will help you grow your business through email marketing and give you the tools and resources to make doing it easy.